Climate Change Not Exaggerated

A study funded by climate change skeptics confirms that global warming is happening at the rate questioned by "Climategate."

By Jef Akst | October 21, 2011

Global warming predictions mapWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, ROBERT A. ROHDE

New methods and new data, same conclusion: the Earth is warming, according to a new study, funded in part by climate change skeptics.

The study was organized in 2009 by University of California physics professor Richard Muller in response to the "Climategate" scandal, in which the emails of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) were hacked and posted online in an effort to expose supposed data manipulation that exaggerated the planet's warming trends.

But the new study puts such claims to bed. With funding from an unlikely source—billionaire US industrialists known to support groups that lobby against man-made global warming—the Berkeley Earth Project used up-to-date techniques and data to determine that previous estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, and others are accurate. Specifically, the researchers, including this year's Nobel Laureate in Physics Saul Perlmutter, documented changing water temperatures in the north Atlantic, as well as an overall warming pattern since 1800. The study further discounted the accusation by bloggers that weather station data only documented a warming trend because of their location in or near cities.

"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK," Muller told the BBC. "This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."

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More BS from t he moonbats... "billionaire US industrialists"Â Please give us the names or does that blow your silly little article! The "Berkeley Earth Project" sure doesn't sound like a group that would lobby against man-made global warming.

I looked on the web-site for the Berkely Earth Project, and it sounds like the project was funded by a number of philanthropic foundations that are run by "billionaire US industrialists". So you can't really say that they privately funded the project, though they likely could have vetoed funding if they were aware of the project and did not agree with its aims. That being said, I have no experience with non-profit foundations or their inner workings.

Of course, the take home message of the story is not who funded the study, but the fact that yet ANOTHER group has used yet ANOTHER independent set of methods to confirm what so many others have already observed. This is science at its finest; the validity of one group's data have been questioned (some may argue whether fairly or unfairly, but that is beside the point) so another group set out to test its conclusions. If they had found that global warming WAS somehow just an anomaly of weather station bias or some other error in previous methods, I have no doubt that this would have been pointed out in the paper.

As to the connotations of the name "Berkeley Earth Project", I don't know what your objection is. It sounds like a team in Berkeley is studying some aspect of the Earth. Or are you trying to highlight the fact that hippies also care for the earth, thus the fact that this group also cares for the earth makes them a bunch of Earth-hugging hippies? I'll have you know that I too care for the earth, yet Bob Dylan is one of my least favourite artists, so I don't think that logic holds very well.

It took me exactly two mouse clicks and no typing or Google search to find the information neuroscientist8 spoke about; the first was on the blue "Berkeley Earth Project" on this page, and then "Our Donors" at the top of that one.Â Anyone with at least half a brain identifies and knows the reputation of the name "Koch".

Your knee jerk response to the article is prototypical of non-scientist deniers of everything real, who see conspiracies everywhere, take a personal affront to them, and declare that fact to the world by way of this blessing and curse called the Internet. Â Your laziness to seek the truth was overwhelmingly evident.Â Â I agree that the article could have been written with more detail (Jef take note please), but, two mouse clicks...come on.

Unfortunately, you can type, so you, like the intelligent,Â must be dealt with similarly in the etherworld with a response.Â Still, I doubt if you could comprehend the jistÂ of the above as you only have one cerebral neuron.Â If you had two, you would have electrocuted yourself by now.Â

Yes an anyone with a 1/4 of a brain understands that being a donor ofÂ unknown amount of money doesn't mean they "funded" this specific study!

So it has nothing to do with my "laziness" but that of the author's.

Please people stop telling me to do the research... On the exact same page that mentions the Koch Brothers you can read this disclaimer

"All donations were provided as unrestricted educational grants, whichmeans the donor organizations have no say over how we conduct theresearch or what we publish. All of our work and results will bepresented with full transparency."

Actually, it is very easy to find names if you do a simple Google search. Â First of all Richard Muller is a well known physicist who has been embraced by people who deny climate change because he had been a long-time critic of government funded climate change studies and openly questioned the accuracy of temperature stations. As for funding, the biggest backer of the project is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, most closely associated with oil billionaires Charles and David Koch. Â Give Muller a lot of credit here because despite his open criticism of climate change research and funding source, he is allowing the data to speak for themselves. Â A true testament to science done well.

What? You seriously expect climate change deniers to do any research to disprove their beliefs????

Why that's almost as absurd as expecting proven facts to change their mind on scientific issues of the day. geez

They long ago concluded the reason why they can't find the facts that support their beliefs is a vast unknown conspiracy that knows they are the ones that know the truth, and "they" don't want everyone to learn what the real truth is!

Actually, the funders weren't looking to disprove their beliefs, but wereÂ truly looking to bolster the weight of the skeptics with their money.Â The Koch Brothers, remember.Â Â But reality is reality, and good scientists are good scientists, so a re-examination of the real data brought on the same conclusions that over 96% of the scientists out there have already made.Â Hopefully, there now will be at least 98%+ now.

Please people stop telling me to do the research... On the exact same page that mentions the Koch Brothers you can read this discalimer

"All donations were provided as unrestricted educational grants, which means the donor organizations have no say over how we conduct the research or what we publish. All of our work and results will be presented with full transparency."

So stop making this something it isn't.... oh right but most of you moonbats only know how to read into things only what you already believe.

Gee, Boo, you sound like an arrogant dope, and you are apparently lazy to boot. While providing no information of your own, you dump on whatever you don't like and demand to be shown the credentials of people who do things you don't understand. You may not realize this, but the University of California at Berkeley isn't a bunch of hippies camped out inb the park, but one of the most respected universities in the world. Ask the very conservative London Times. Muller and Perlemutter are respected physicists, and Muller was something of a climate change skeptic. If you want information from a pristine conservative source, try looking at The Economist Â at (http://www.economist.com/node/... which has information about the study; see also Â (http://www.novim.org/). I made it very easy, although yuo could get there in one minute by following the links in the Scientist article. Among many other sponsors, funding for the unbiased study was provided by the Koch Foundation. Heard of them, have you? Does that blow your silly comment?Â I won't pretend that you made a 'nice try'. In fact, you made a fool of yourself. Try to learn from your blunder. Peer reviewed science is perhaps the least biased form of information available. It is not perfect, but corrects itself in time. The people your deride are far more credible and unbiased than billionaire US industrialists like the Koch Bros. Â

Please refrain from ad hominem attacks, name calling, and/or general profanity in this forum. If you engage in such behavior in posting your comment, it will be deleted by the moderator. Some comments reflecting these attributes have already been taken down.

More BS from t he moonbats... "billionaire US industrialists"Â Please give us the names or does that blow your silly little article! The "Berkeley Earth Project" sure doesn't sound like a group that would lobby against man-made global warming.

I looked on the web-site for the Berkely Earth Project, and it sounds like the project was funded by a number of philanthropic foundations that are run by "billionaire US industrialists". So you can't really say that they privately funded the project, though they likely could have vetoed funding if they were aware of the project and did not agree with its aims. That being said, I have no experience with non-profit foundations or their inner workings.

Of course, the take home message of the story is not who funded the study, but the fact that yet ANOTHER group has used yet ANOTHER independent set of methods to confirm what so many others have already observed. This is science at its finest; the validity of one group's data have been questioned (some may argue whether fairly or unfairly, but that is beside the point) so another group set out to test its conclusions. If they had found that global warming WAS somehow just an anomaly of weather station bias or some other error in previous methods, I have no doubt that this would have been pointed out in the paper.

As to the connotations of the name "Berkeley Earth Project", I don't know what your objection is. It sounds like a team in Berkeley is studying some aspect of the Earth. Or are you trying to highlight the fact that hippies also care for the earth, thus the fact that this group also cares for the earth makes them a bunch of Earth-hugging hippies? I'll have you know that I too care for the earth, yet Bob Dylan is one of my least favourite artists, so I don't think that logic holds very well.

It took me exactly two mouse clicks and no typing or Google search to find the information neuroscientist8 spoke about; the first was on the blue "Berkeley Earth Project" on this page, and then "Our Donors" at the top of that one.Â Anyone with at least half a brain identifies and knows the reputation of the name "Koch".

Your knee jerk response to the article is prototypical of non-scientist deniers of everything real, who see conspiracies everywhere, take a personal affront to them, and declare that fact to the world by way of this blessing and curse called the Internet. Â Your laziness to seek the truth was overwhelmingly evident.Â Â I agree that the article could have been written with more detail (Jef take note please), but, two mouse clicks...come on.

Unfortunately, you can type, so you, like the intelligent,Â must be dealt with similarly in the etherworld with a response.Â Still, I doubt if you could comprehend the jistÂ of the above as you only have one cerebral neuron.Â If you had two, you would have electrocuted yourself by now.Â

Yes an anyone with a 1/4 of a brain understands that being a donor ofÂ unknown amount of money doesn't mean they "funded" this specific study!

So it has nothing to do with my "laziness" but that of the author's.

Please people stop telling me to do the research... On the exact same page that mentions the Koch Brothers you can read this disclaimer

"All donations were provided as unrestricted educational grants, whichmeans the donor organizations have no say over how we conduct theresearch or what we publish. All of our work and results will bepresented with full transparency."

Actually, it is very easy to find names if you do a simple Google search. Â First of all Richard Muller is a well known physicist who has been embraced by people who deny climate change because he had been a long-time critic of government funded climate change studies and openly questioned the accuracy of temperature stations. As for funding, the biggest backer of the project is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, most closely associated with oil billionaires Charles and David Koch. Â Give Muller a lot of credit here because despite his open criticism of climate change research and funding source, he is allowing the data to speak for themselves. Â A true testament to science done well.

What? You seriously expect climate change deniers to do any research to disprove their beliefs????

Why that's almost as absurd as expecting proven facts to change their mind on scientific issues of the day. geez

They long ago concluded the reason why they can't find the facts that support their beliefs is a vast unknown conspiracy that knows they are the ones that know the truth, and "they" don't want everyone to learn what the real truth is!

Actually, the funders weren't looking to disprove their beliefs, but wereÂ truly looking to bolster the weight of the skeptics with their money.Â The Koch Brothers, remember.Â Â But reality is reality, and good scientists are good scientists, so a re-examination of the real data brought on the same conclusions that over 96% of the scientists out there have already made.Â Hopefully, there now will be at least 98%+ now.

Please people stop telling me to do the research... On the exact same page that mentions the Koch Brothers you can read this discalimer

"All donations were provided as unrestricted educational grants, which means the donor organizations have no say over how we conduct the research or what we publish. All of our work and results will be presented with full transparency."

So stop making this something it isn't.... oh right but most of you moonbats only know how to read into things only what you already believe.

Gee, Boo, you sound like an arrogant dope, and you are apparently lazy to boot. While providing no information of your own, you dump on whatever you don't like and demand to be shown the credentials of people who do things you don't understand. You may not realize this, but the University of California at Berkeley isn't a bunch of hippies camped out inb the park, but one of the most respected universities in the world. Ask the very conservative London Times. Muller and Perlemutter are respected physicists, and Muller was something of a climate change skeptic. If you want information from a pristine conservative source, try looking at The Economist Â at (http://www.economist.com/node/... which has information about the study; see also Â (http://www.novim.org/). I made it very easy, although yuo could get there in one minute by following the links in the Scientist article. Among many other sponsors, funding for the unbiased study was provided by the Koch Foundation. Heard of them, have you? Does that blow your silly comment?Â I won't pretend that you made a 'nice try'. In fact, you made a fool of yourself. Try to learn from your blunder. Peer reviewed science is perhaps the least biased form of information available. It is not perfect, but corrects itself in time. The people your deride are far more credible and unbiased than billionaire US industrialists like the Koch Bros. Â

Please refrain from ad hominem attacks, name calling, and/or general profanity in this forum. If you engage in such behavior in posting your comment, it will be deleted by the moderator. Some comments reflecting these attributes have already been taken down.

More BS from t he moonbats... "billionaire US industrialists"Â Please give us the names or does that blow your silly little article! The "Berkeley Earth Project" sure doesn't sound like a group that would lobby against man-made global warming.

I looked on the web-site for the Berkely Earth Project, and it sounds like the project was funded by a number of philanthropic foundations that are run by "billionaire US industrialists". So you can't really say that they privately funded the project, though they likely could have vetoed funding if they were aware of the project and did not agree with its aims. That being said, I have no experience with non-profit foundations or their inner workings.

Of course, the take home message of the story is not who funded the study, but the fact that yet ANOTHER group has used yet ANOTHER independent set of methods to confirm what so many others have already observed. This is science at its finest; the validity of one group's data have been questioned (some may argue whether fairly or unfairly, but that is beside the point) so another group set out to test its conclusions. If they had found that global warming WAS somehow just an anomaly of weather station bias or some other error in previous methods, I have no doubt that this would have been pointed out in the paper.

As to the connotations of the name "Berkeley Earth Project", I don't know what your objection is. It sounds like a team in Berkeley is studying some aspect of the Earth. Or are you trying to highlight the fact that hippies also care for the earth, thus the fact that this group also cares for the earth makes them a bunch of Earth-hugging hippies? I'll have you know that I too care for the earth, yet Bob Dylan is one of my least favourite artists, so I don't think that logic holds very well.

It took me exactly two mouse clicks and no typing or Google search to find the information neuroscientist8 spoke about; the first was on the blue "Berkeley Earth Project" on this page, and then "Our Donors" at the top of that one.Â Anyone with at least half a brain identifies and knows the reputation of the name "Koch".

Your knee jerk response to the article is prototypical of non-scientist deniers of everything real, who see conspiracies everywhere, take a personal affront to them, and declare that fact to the world by way of this blessing and curse called the Internet. Â Your laziness to seek the truth was overwhelmingly evident.Â Â I agree that the article could have been written with more detail (Jef take note please), but, two mouse clicks...come on.

Unfortunately, you can type, so you, like the intelligent,Â must be dealt with similarly in the etherworld with a response.Â Still, I doubt if you could comprehend the jistÂ of the above as you only have one cerebral neuron.Â If you had two, you would have electrocuted yourself by now.Â

Yes an anyone with a 1/4 of a brain understands that being a donor ofÂ unknown amount of money doesn't mean they "funded" this specific study!

So it has nothing to do with my "laziness" but that of the author's.

Please people stop telling me to do the research... On the exact same page that mentions the Koch Brothers you can read this disclaimer

"All donations were provided as unrestricted educational grants, whichmeans the donor organizations have no say over how we conduct theresearch or what we publish. All of our work and results will bepresented with full transparency."

Actually, it is very easy to find names if you do a simple Google search. Â First of all Richard Muller is a well known physicist who has been embraced by people who deny climate change because he had been a long-time critic of government funded climate change studies and openly questioned the accuracy of temperature stations. As for funding, the biggest backer of the project is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, most closely associated with oil billionaires Charles and David Koch. Â Give Muller a lot of credit here because despite his open criticism of climate change research and funding source, he is allowing the data to speak for themselves. Â A true testament to science done well.

What? You seriously expect climate change deniers to do any research to disprove their beliefs????

Why that's almost as absurd as expecting proven facts to change their mind on scientific issues of the day. geez

They long ago concluded the reason why they can't find the facts that support their beliefs is a vast unknown conspiracy that knows they are the ones that know the truth, and "they" don't want everyone to learn what the real truth is!

Actually, the funders weren't looking to disprove their beliefs, but wereÂ truly looking to bolster the weight of the skeptics with their money.Â The Koch Brothers, remember.Â Â But reality is reality, and good scientists are good scientists, so a re-examination of the real data brought on the same conclusions that over 96% of the scientists out there have already made.Â Hopefully, there now will be at least 98%+ now.

Please people stop telling me to do the research... On the exact same page that mentions the Koch Brothers you can read this discalimer

"All donations were provided as unrestricted educational grants, which means the donor organizations have no say over how we conduct the research or what we publish. All of our work and results will be presented with full transparency."

So stop making this something it isn't.... oh right but most of you moonbats only know how to read into things only what you already believe.

Gee, Boo, you sound like an arrogant dope, and you are apparently lazy to boot. While providing no information of your own, you dump on whatever you don't like and demand to be shown the credentials of people who do things you don't understand. You may not realize this, but the University of California at Berkeley isn't a bunch of hippies camped out inb the park, but one of the most respected universities in the world. Ask the very conservative London Times. Muller and Perlemutter are respected physicists, and Muller was something of a climate change skeptic. If you want information from a pristine conservative source, try looking at The Economist Â at (http://www.economist.com/node/... which has information about the study; see also Â (http://www.novim.org/). I made it very easy, although yuo could get there in one minute by following the links in the Scientist article. Among many other sponsors, funding for the unbiased study was provided by the Koch Foundation. Heard of them, have you? Does that blow your silly comment?Â I won't pretend that you made a 'nice try'. In fact, you made a fool of yourself. Try to learn from your blunder. Peer reviewed science is perhaps the least biased form of information available. It is not perfect, but corrects itself in time. The people your deride are far more credible and unbiased than billionaire US industrialists like the Koch Bros. Â

Please refrain from ad hominem attacks, name calling, and/or general profanity in this forum. If you engage in such behavior in posting your comment, it will be deleted by the moderator. Some comments reflecting these attributes have already been taken down.

As I recall, through most of the last 560 million years, the Earth has been much warmer than now with high sealevels. Ignoring the hypothetical Precambrian Â "Snowball Earth" interval, which if real could have resulted in a forever frozen planet, hundreds of million years were very warm, sometimes with high CO2, sometimes not, and lots of water. The Late Cretaceous was clearly a time of warm climates, abundant vegetation and very high CO2 levels, perhaps 5-8 times current levels, , and possibly O2 levels at 30-35% or more based on amber and other studies--lots of Cretaceous coal and oil. Â At the end of the Pleistocene, the most astounding episode of global warming too place as the Wisconsinan glaciers melted in a remarkably brief time and sealevels very rapidly rose some 120 meters drowning valleys, coastal areas, etc., again with not much evidence of CO2 inducement of this profound and one would think catastrophic warming. Interestingly terminal Pleistocene extinctions and range shifts accompanied this episode. Pollen records show howÂ cold adaptedÂ environments shifted northward, and modern floras and faunas became dominant.

I guess there may be more complex (and interesting) things going on that just 7 billion people exhaling CO2, and coal and all those rainforest producing CO2 at night. The world is a strange and complex place.

As I recall, through most of the last 560 million years, the Earth has been much warmer than now with high sealevels. Ignoring the hypothetical Precambrian Â "Snowball Earth" interval, which if real could have resulted in a forever frozen planet, hundreds of million years were very warm, sometimes with high CO2, sometimes not, and lots of water. The Late Cretaceous was clearly a time of warm climates, abundant vegetation and very high CO2 levels, perhaps 5-8 times current levels, , and possibly O2 levels at 30-35% or more based on amber and other studies--lots of Cretaceous coal and oil. Â At the end of the Pleistocene, the most astounding episode of global warming too place as the Wisconsinan glaciers melted in a remarkably brief time and sealevels very rapidly rose some 120 meters drowning valleys, coastal areas, etc., again with not much evidence of CO2 inducement of this profound and one would think catastrophic warming. Interestingly terminal Pleistocene extinctions and range shifts accompanied this episode. Pollen records show howÂ cold adaptedÂ environments shifted northward, and modern floras and faunas became dominant.

I guess there may be more complex (and interesting) things going on that just 7 billion people exhaling CO2, and coal and all those rainforest producing CO2 at night. The world is a strange and complex place.

As I recall, through most of the last 560 million years, the Earth has been much warmer than now with high sealevels. Ignoring the hypothetical Precambrian Â "Snowball Earth" interval, which if real could have resulted in a forever frozen planet, hundreds of million years were very warm, sometimes with high CO2, sometimes not, and lots of water. The Late Cretaceous was clearly a time of warm climates, abundant vegetation and very high CO2 levels, perhaps 5-8 times current levels, , and possibly O2 levels at 30-35% or more based on amber and other studies--lots of Cretaceous coal and oil. Â At the end of the Pleistocene, the most astounding episode of global warming too place as the Wisconsinan glaciers melted in a remarkably brief time and sealevels very rapidly rose some 120 meters drowning valleys, coastal areas, etc., again with not much evidence of CO2 inducement of this profound and one would think catastrophic warming. Interestingly terminal Pleistocene extinctions and range shifts accompanied this episode. Pollen records show howÂ cold adaptedÂ environments shifted northward, and modern floras and faunas became dominant.

I guess there may be more complex (and interesting) things going on that just 7 billion people exhaling CO2, and coal and all those rainforest producing CO2 at night. The world is a strange and complex place.